The Lordly Bones: Richard III’s Remains Discovered in Parking Lot

Archaeologists discovered the (apparently AWOL!) corpse of 15th-century British king/Shakespearean antagonist Richard III beneath a parking lot in Leicester, England. In the vaudevillian retelling of this incident, Richard III’s wiggly skeleton asks whether the British archaeologists can validate his parking.

Scientists confirmed the identity of the bones—which will be re-buried next year somewhere better than a parking lot—by comparing D.N.A. samples with those from descendants of the monarch. The skeleton also has that trademark, Richard III–style extravagant deformity. Curvy spine? Mass head trauma? Can’t miss it. The New York Times reports: “The team from the University of Leicester said that the body displayed 10 wounds, 8 of them in the skull and some likely to have caused death, possibly by a blow from a halberd, a kind of medieval weapon with an ax-like head on a long pole. Other wounds seem to have been inflicted after his death to humiliate the monarch after his armor was stripped away and he was paraded naked over the back of a horse, the researchers said.”

Fellow royal Charlene of Monaco is like, “Eight fatal skull wounds from an ax-topped pole followed by a posthumous, naked horseback ride? Sign me up!”